Son of Light and Darkness
by Sundance Coyote
Summary: What is Akiva's last haunting memory of the night he was taken from his mother and how did Madrigal help him forget? Akiva POV. Maybe just a one-shot. Maybe something more.


Son of Light and Darkness

~ _Once upon a time, a seraph emperor and a Stelian concubine spent a night together, and their passion lit a fire that made the world burn~_

 _Five years old._

 _Location: Somewhere. Home?_

 _He doesn't remember anything but eyes. Flames flicker behind domed lenses rimmed in black, half-hidden behind a mess of hair that is blacker._

 _"You'll be good, my darling. Oh you'll be so good," his mother whispers, cupping his chin in a palm that feels rough and hardened, but he must not be paying attention to it because he's fixed on her eyes, committing them to memory. He knows he will never see them again. Gently, she pulls him towards her into a tight embrace, the last he may ever know, until his vision is clouded by her hair spattering his cheeks like ink dust. Warmth. Darkness. (Dare he think in hindsight) Love._

 _Suddenly, he is shunted away from that darkness. Smooth fingers guide him by the shoulders into an overpowering white light. All he can see is war. And as they drag him further and further away, his mother does not pull him back. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

 _Soon after…_

 _Location: Central Cathedral, Astrae_

 _He does not remember anything of the journey. Only a tall seraph with hands covered in lines who tells him they've come to the Cathedral, where he will begin his training. There's a cluster of others his age in a room lined with doors. Someone grabs him from behind, fingers marked with the same lines as all the other seraphs, turns him around. Two seraphs._

 _"One of Joram's," the one who grabbed him grumbles to the other, who holds a clipboard._

 _"Akiva. We'll call him Akiva." The first seraph lines his eyes with thick kohl and the other cuts his hair off._

 _Black hair falls over white and silver tiles made of quartz. His name is Akiva. He is crying. And no one will uncuff his hands._

 _Hazeal is older by a few years. The seraph says that Akiva will be Hazael's roommate because they are both Joram's bastards...but they do not look alike. Hazeal, like all the seraphs, has skin white as the quartz tiles that make up the floor of every room in the central cathedral. His hair is yellow like Nitid, the moon of tears and life and light. His eyes blue like her sky in the daytime._

 _Akiva looks down at his brown wrists cloaked in the white robe one of the seraphs gave him, and thinks maybe he is colored wrong. He reaches back to touch his own hair for comparison, but it is gone. And he remembers. The seraph who tied his hands cut it off. The seraph with lines on his fingers who took him away from his mother who was colored wrong, too. He tries to forget all of this and focus on remembering the exact shade of the fire in her eyes._

 _"Who are you?" Hazael asks and his voice sounds angry, like he doesn't want Akiva to be sharing his room._

 _"They told me my name is Akiva. And that we have the same blood."_

 _" Half of us here do. Fat lot our blood means when Joram doesn't care where it spills." Akiva will come to learn the double-edged significance of Hazael's words. In this moment, though, he is, for the last time, too young to understand. He doesn't want to be here. He wants the woman with fire eyes, but she let them take him to this place without any color._

 _"Hey! Look at me!" Hazael snaps and Akiva does as he is told. "No crying. That's the first thing you'll learn-better from me than from them." His voice still sounds angry, but his eyes, though fireless, appear to soften with something akin to kindness._

 _"Why did they bring us here?" Akiva asks, trying to keep more tears at bay._

 _"To train us," Hazael replies as if the answer is obvious._

 _"Train us? For what?"_

 _"For the war, of course."_

 _Akiva has heard of the war, but only as something remote and distant whose heroes his mother had told him stories of before bed. Great monsters and their magic. She never told him why they were fighting. He always assumed maybe she didn't know._

 _"They're sending us to war?" He imagines entering a battlefield full of those same great monsters of his mother's stories...he imagines being one of them, and looks down again at his skinny wrists and bony fingers._

 _"Don't worry," Hazael assures him. "You'll grow up first. They'll make you."_

Several Years Later...

After the Battle of Bullfinch

Madrigal is sleeping. Her bat's wings are folded flat against her back and her arm is tossed over her face, mussing her short brown hair. She is naked save for the wishbone around her neck, lying atop her clothes, the blue gown almost as dark as the temple of Ellai itself, which is constructed mainly of onyx pillars adorned with diamonds holding up a domed ornamental roof. Carefully, so as not to wake her, Akiva sits cross legged next to Madrigal's sleeping form and runs his fingers over the outline of her shoulders still dusted in sugar from the ball-sugar he evidently hasn't done a good enough job making swift work of. She stirs.

"Akiva?"

"Yes?"

"Come and lie here with me," she murmurs sleepily, patting the space beside her. He understands and stretches out over the folds of the gown, pulling her body close to him.

"You're warm...for a monster," she chuckles, probably intending her remark to be a joke, but he doesn't find it funny.

"You're calling me a monster?" he asks incredulously.

"If I can be a monster, why can't you be? What makes you and I any different from each other, really? We've both been brought up to fight a war someone else started." Akiva thinks of the bright light the last night he saw his mother. Light. Fire. Eyes. Her words, "You'll be good…"Good at what? Good for what? He looks at the marks on his hands and back at Madrigal.

"You're right. I am more monster than you. And we shouldn't be here together." Because I don't deserve you...he thinks. Madrigal had told him a story on the flight over here-a chimaera story about Ellai, and her sister Nitid, the other moon in the sky over Eretz. The sun was supposed to marry Nitid, the light moon, but he was in love with Ellai, the dark one. The sun raped Ellai violently while she was bathing in the sea and when she fought back against him, droplets of his blood formed the seraphim, the monsters of the chimaera world. "You're right. I am the sun…" he continues, but she tenderly lays the back of her hand against his cheek, careful not to touch him with her hamsas, which she leaves to face outwards, away from him.

"Maybe we can make a new story," she says and at first he doesn't understand her.

"A new story? What kind of story?"

"A story where there are no binaries. No light, no darkness, no angels and no monsters."


End file.
